3 tips for maintaining advocacy program engagement

The power of employee advocacy in supercharging your social media strategy should not be underestimated. It’s a game-changing approach for businesses aiming to expand their reach, enhance engagement, and elevate credibility.

Research shows that content shared by employees receives 8x more engagement than content shared by brand channels. As well as this, leads generated through employee advocacy are 7x more likely to convert compared to other leads.

However, the success of an advocacy program hinges on active participation. If your advocates aren’t engaged, even the best-laid plans can fall flat. To ensure your program thrives, here are three essential tips to keep your advocates motivated and engaged that will help you drive successful results.

Jump ahead:

• Support your team with ongoing training and open communication
• Fuel your workplace’s competitive spirit with a company contest
• Deliver notifications where your advocates are already engaged

1. Support your team with ongoing training and open communication

Let’s face it, not all the employees who join your company are born social media stars.

For you and your marketing team, it might be natural to share your thoughts and knowledge about your industry on social. But for the majority of your organization, it’s unknown territory. For them, building a personal brand in front of an online audience can be uncomfortable, and they also might not completely understand the benefits in store for them from posting regularly on social media.

This is one of the major hurdles when it comes to maintaining your advocates’ participation and engagement in your program.

Providing ongoing training and support might be a basic and less exciting strategy for maintaining engagement, but it’s one you don’t want to underestimate. Don’t assume your team is aware of how important advocacy is to their careers and you.

Training builds trust with your advocates and encourages them to lean on you for support when needed. A well-supported advocate is more likely to be proactive and enthusiastic about participating in your advocacy program, leading to higher levels of engagement and consistency in content sharing.

There are several ways you can offer this support:

• Conduct training sessions on how to promote your brand on social, interact with members online, and remain compliant if your industry requires this.
• Teach your advocates social media best practices, including platform basics, algorithm insights, and posting frequencies.
• Organize workshops on how to use your advocacy tool for seamless content sharing.
• Offer 1:1 support sessions for personalized assistance.
• Don’t forget to open the floor for feedback and suggestions from your advocates to boost their participation and investment in your program. This input will help you create a program that meets their needs and also helps you manage a program your advocates want to be part of.

2. Fuel your workplace’s competitive spirit with a company contest

Building excitement around employee advocacy is crucial for engagement, and the best way to achieve this is through gamification.

We’ll let the statistics speak for themselves:

• 81% of employees said that gamification in the workplace helped them feel socially connected
• 89% of employees said that when a task is gamified, they feel competitive and eager to complete it
• 95% of employees said they prefer companies that implement gamification

There’s nothing like friendly competition in the office, and it will significantly enhance your advocates’ engagement. Here’s how:

• Boosts motivation: Competitions create a sense of excitement and urgency, encouraging employees to participate more actively.
• Fosters healthy competition: Friendly rivalry among employees can drive higher participation rates and quality content sharing.
• Increases visibility: Competitions bring attention to the advocacy program, making it more prominent within the organization.
• Provides incentives: Rewards and recognition from competitions can serve as powerful motivators for continuous engagement.
• Encourages consistent participation: Regular competitions can establish a routine of active involvement in the advocacy program.
• Builds a culture of advocacy: Regular competitions can embed advocacy into the company culture, making it a natural part of employees’ roles.

Without these engaging competitions, your advocacy program may just seem like another task on your employees’ to-do list. To succeed, carefully plan your goals, desired outcomes, strategies for advocate support, and your rewards for the winners.

Whether you opt for having them compete for the most amount of link clicks or run your competition by a point system, make sure you have it mapped out before launch day.

Here are some mistakes and best practices to consider when creating your competitions:

Check out our do’s and don’t’s guide for an in-depth explanation of the best practices you need to know when gamifying your advocacy program.

3. Deliver notifications where your advocates are already engaged

For an employee advocacy program to succeed, advocates must share content regularly. The most effective strategy to ensure they share frequently is delivering content directly to where employees are already engaged, such as on Slack or Microsoft Teams.

Every workday, your colleagues log in and communicate with their team, with their Slack or Microsoft Teams app always open and running in the background.

In between these daily messages, your advocates are busy managing their daily responsibilities. While advocacy is a priority for you, they might not log into their Advocacy Board daily without being prompted to do so.

Now, we know what you’re thinking. You don’t have time to manually update everyone about new content on your Advocacy Board. Here’s the good news: Oktopost automates this process, taking off another task from your to-do list.

Here’s how it works:

Oktopost’s Social Advocacy App on Slack sends your advocates a direct Slack message each time a new story is added to their Advocacy Boards. Along with the alert, your advocates will see a preview of the story details so they can instantly understand if this is a topic that resonates with them and their personal brand.

This timely delivery will increase the likelihood of immediate engagement by making it that much easier to share content.

Oktopost Employee Advocacy for Teams allows your advocates to view your advocacy content from inside the Teams App. A personalized view of Advocacy can be pinned to give all your advocates access to all your Messages or Stories, making their job of finding the relevant content and sharing this across their own Social Profiles much easier.

They can also access a detailed Leaderboard through the App in Microsoft Teams, encouraging friendly competition and motivating them to continue sharing advocacy content to grow their own personal brand without needing to leave the Microsoft Teams app.

So whether your company is team Slack or enthusiastic Microsoft Teams users, we’re here to help you boost your program either way.

Here’s why this is a game-changer:

• Convenience: Employees already use Slack or Microsoft Teams daily, making it easy to access and share advocacy content.
• Visibility: Seeing advocacy content from within Slack or Teams keeps your brand content top of mind during daily tasks.
• Adoption: Advocates stay updated without switching platforms, encouraging regular participation.
• Engagement: These tools keep advocates informed and engaged, ensuring consistent content sharing for program success.

Boost employee advocacy engagement with Oktopost

By supporting your team with ongoing training, fueling their competitive spirit with company contests, and delivering timely notifications, you’ll set your advocacy program up for success.

By integrating advocacy alerts into daily communication platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams, you’ll seamlessly embed advocacy tasks into their workflow. This will boost convenience and visibility, drive higher adoption, and ensure consistent engagement by keeping your advocates in the loop and making it easier to share content.

To learn more about Oktopost’s Social Advocacy App on Slack and Oktopost Employee Advocacy for Teams contact your Customer Success Manager or reach out to our team today.